I do believe I wrote that I thought that the night would go fairly easily; due to the large number of ambulances that would be on the road (Double time pay for today would mean that all overtime would be filled up completely).

Oh well, goes to show how wrong I can be.

We were out for most of the night, unable top catch even a ten minute nap and consequentially we were tired and prone to "Sense of humour failures". If there was one thing we needed last night it was a sense of humour.

The first job was to an elderly man who was found by his community carer laying on the floor covered in bloody vomit - the carer had put a duvet under the mans head, but hadn't tried to clean him up in any way. Instead we managed to clean him up a little in the back of the ambulance. He was quite ill and ended up in Resus.

Then we got into the type of job that characterised the rest of the night - a drunk male, surrounded by police who was adamant that he hadn't been assaulted (as we had been told) and who didn’t want anyone bothering him. This was fine by us as he was belligerent towards the police (who were just trying to help him) and us (who couldn't care less about him). The police were happy and told him to go home, but that wasn't good enough for him so he threw himself in front of the police car and lay down. Needless to say this didn't impress the police so they arrested him. Getting him into the back of the police van was funny to watch - especially when a very young copper ran over to tell us that "He looks like he is about to vomit", to which my reply was "Well stick his head out the van door then".
The police took him away, but we met up with him again at the London hospital after he feigned unconsciousness in the police cell. His saga ended with him sharing the "piss-head" bench outside the A&E with another four alcoholics.

We then got a "swollen throat", category “A”; which turned out to be a sore throat, with no airway obstruction, that the patient had been nursing since the morning. He sore throat also meant (for some reason I can't understand) that she couldn't walk in anything more than a shuffle. The walk from reception to the waiting room at Newham hospital took a couple of minutes.

Then we went to a 15 year old girl with a sore throat for two weeks that had called NHS (re) Direct they had then told her to call an ambulance!

Then we had the patient that I would have quite happily dropped out of the back of the ambulance while doing 70mph down the A13. We got a call from the police to a "fitting male". When we got there, the "fitter" was standing up, chatting to the police. The story was that he was an epileptic who during the night had got drunk, taken some cocaine - and when arrested (I don't know what for - but given the pub, quite probably affray) had had a fit. We walked him on to the ambulance and got halfway down the road where he proudly told us that he had faked his fit because he didn't want to be arrested - and instead had tickets to see West Ham in Cardiff. He then asked us if we could drop him off at his house.

I told him to "Fuck off out my ambulance" and kicked him out. To be honest he is lucky that is all that we did to him.

All during this Control were holding emergency calls all over London...We had over 3,700 calls yesterday.

With a bit of luck he'll be beaten up by Crystal Palace fans after the defeat of West Ham at the Cardiff Playoff.

The rest of the night continued in a similar vein, with our last job being an RTA on the A13 where a car drove into the back of another - the rear car driver had ran off, and the other driver didn't travel and was left in the care of the same police who dealt with our first drunk.

L.O.B. means "Load Of Bollocks", as in "This call is L.O.B". Last night was L.O.B.

I was only at our station for the first bit of the new Big Brother, but that was enough to make me want to stab all the contestants.

If we could just get the Americans to air-strike the house, Britain would be a much nicer place to live.